minute thoughts 08.30.15

Thoughts while Googling Oprah's personal email address

1. I should drink more water. The 33.8 ounces I keep on my desk at work every day is doing nothing for my skin at the moment.

2. What's Oprah been doing these days? Besides being Oprah (read: amazing). She's been pretty quiet since OWN launched, but I know she has a house somewhere in Santa Barbara, so maybe she's just chilling. Maybe I should ask her to hang out. We're looking for Rush Week speakers for our fraternity...maybe I should call her.

3. I need to make some significant progress on all of my mini-projects before the summer ends. For example: finishing my book, learning how to code in Python, updating my portfolio on my website, designing personal logos for my friends, trying all of the dessert places in the city, etc.

3. I FINALLY FINISHED WATCHING THAT '70S SHOW. I've been procrastinating on watching the last episode because I was devastated when they wrote Eric out of the series but I knew he was coming back in the finale, so I tried to prolong it as much as possible. I did the same thing with Friends, Parks & Rec, Dollhouse, and the last Tennant episode of Doctor Who (actually that's a lie; I still refuse to watch The End of Time to this day). This is is why I don't watch many series start to finish. I'm just not emotionally equipped to deal with the finales.

4. It's only August, but I'm already excited that Christmas is less than four months away (I stumbled upon this Samsung ad for the millionth time and got all nostalgic). I think it's because we always did the traditional Christmas thing...the decorations, the big family dinners, the Christmas music playing 24/7, the Holiday of Lights, the turkey and hot apple cider. I'm a sucker for all of it. Is it normal for adults to be this excited about Christmas? If not, then I'd rather not be an adult.

5. theSkimm and Bloglovin' are two things more people need to know about. theSkimm is a short and sassily-written news brief delivered to your email daily, and Bloglovin' is Instagram for bloggers. Two of my favorite things to read in the morning. Especially Bloglovin'...it's highly addictive and I could spend hours reading content and finding new blogs to follow.

6. I miss traveling. I saw a picture of an elephant park in Thailand the other day and it made my heart hurt a little because I miss it so much. There are a select few moments of my existence that I can call life-changing, and almost all of them have occurred while traveling. I miss exploring new places and the richness of experiencing new things. It makes me sad that I probably won't travel for a while after this year.

7. I got catcalled the other day and literally seethed for an hour afterward. The guy wasn't trying to pick me up; he was just trying to be creepy and make me uncomfortable. There was no reason for it. He gained nothing from it, and he knew he would gain nothing from it. He just did it because he could. And it made me so angry because it's not fair. It's not fair that I have to walk down the street praying that my outfit doesn't warrant a whistle or a comment from someone. It's not fair that I have to worry that if I make a man angry he's going to follow me home. It's not fair that I've had to perfect a laugh reserved for covering my uneasiness when someone on the street makes a sexual comment toward me. It's not fair that I have to apologize for not wanting to go out with a guy, because they don't understand the word "no" and I have to justify my feelings. It's not fair that I have to jump to the worst case scenario when someone makes conversation with me and assume that person is a threat to me. And even though it's a small thing and in this case I wasn't in any real danger, it perpetuates a culture in which it's okay for men to exert power over women just because they can. It saturates our culture with this inherent male dominance (although I hate using that kind of language, you can't deny that it's true), this "boys will be boys" attitude, this "just deal with it" mentality. But I don't want to just deal with it. I have the right to live in any city I want to and not feel objectified walking around my own damn neighborhood.

8. Trailers for horror movies like The Visit and Goodnight Mommy. Good lord. As if I needed more things to be paranoid about.

9. I wrote "drive back to Santa Barbara" on my calendar this morning, and I kind of stopped for a moment. Am I going to Santa Barbara or back to Santa Barbara? I guess you could argue that it's technically both, and I've always considered Santa Barbara a a second home, but it reminded me of something my friend said to me last summer about his parents moving after he graduated: "Isn't it strange that this concept of home is changing so much? It's so fluid. And soon it won't exist anymore." And it's very bittersweet, this thought of simultaneously moving on with our lives and leaving so much behind. My parents are considering moving after my youngest sister goes to college. And then there will be nothing tying me to San Diego anymore. Saying I'm going "back" to Santa Barbara feels like I'm leaving my San Diego home a little farther behind each time.

10. These "minute thoughts" are becoming quite long and it's only the second one.